Aid as an encounter at the interface: the complexity of the global fight against poverty

Abstract

International development discourse has recently shifted its focus from top‐down economic adjustment to participative anti‐poverty policy. This shift hints at an acknowledgement of the local complexities within the poverty process and at a need to listen to and develop actions with the ‘poor’. But, whereas the mainstream argument remains couched in a technical framework, we argue that the fight against poverty is inevitably political. Conceptualising the aid industry as a set of global–local interfaces, it follows that a closer look at ‘participation’ in anti‐poverty interventions is needed to come to grips with the political issues involved. Four issues are discussed: the complexity of local ‘participation’, given the ‘polycephalous’ character of third world societies; the power biases in the aid chain; the potential problem of ‘false consciousness’; and the ambiguities of the role of local development brokers. We conclude that anti‐poverty policy is in need of ‘interface experts’, who, through ‘provocation’ can beget ‘participation’.